First of all, apologies for the long delay in blogging, I seem to be saying that on every other post lately but will try to be a bit more frequent in my posts from now on.
So this was a 3 week job that we did through the month of December, on the border of Herefordshire and Gloucestershire in the UK. This job was for a regular client at a retirement home where we had already done a huge amount of maintenance around a naturally fed pond. But this time we had to revamp and old worn down terrace outside of one of the living quarters.
The original terrace was built using concrete slabs which were not laid well at all. With very little contact between the mortar and slab, caused many of them to break over time. The sub base that we dug up was also very soft, and mixed with clay/soil. It was also surrounded but a single skinned brick wall with piers.
First job was to pull down the brick wall that came down with nothing more than a 2 man scrum-like push. The slabs were all lifted and the poor sub base was removed. We then replaced the brick wall with a double skinned natural stone wall, using local Forest of Dean stone. We got all of the walling done before we moved onto the paving which started with bringing in the 5 tonnes of fresh sub base. Once this was compacted with a wacker plate, we started laying the paving on a 5-1 sharp sand mix. The paving was natural stone Indian slabs, all 900mm X 600mm (3’ x 2’), laid in stretcher 1/2 bond (brick work pattern). Unfortunately for us, although the winter had been very kind to us, we were caught out with 2 days of bad weather. We tried our best on both days but it was apparent very quickly that we we would be taking a step backwards if we tried to continue.
Even with the attempt of moving the running water with a leaf blower, it just wasn’t working.
Once the weather changed for the best, we finished the paving which included a step out of the patio doors, with a large platform for the tenant. It also included a recessed manhole cover which hid the horrible rusty cover that once was. The new wall and piers were capped with the same Indian stone that we used for the paving. The final job will be to fit the 2 gates once the fabricator has built them in February. The overall job was a very good transformation, and is now much safer.
Our first job after Christmas is now to carry on with the front of the property which I will post about when finished.
Thank you for taking the time to view my post, and as always if you have any questions about this job, or anything to do with landscaping in general, feel free to ask.
